


Data

by YourBonesShallCrackBeneathMyHeel



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 02:25:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11819280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourBonesShallCrackBeneathMyHeel/pseuds/YourBonesShallCrackBeneathMyHeel
Summary: A story about a little girl helped by Data.





	Data

I was 3 years old, maybe 4, when I first met him. Being a child; movies, cartoons, and books all meld into your world more than that of an adult. And Star Trek was the distant future! I could play along with some fairy tales...if they weren't stupid! Falling down a rabbit hole to a up-side-down-inside-out world was plausible. I had felt so happy, I thought I might have started to fly like Peter from Neverland. But some were just too silly and childish for this 4 year old! After being read to sleep by the words of J.R.R Tolkien, stories of Raggedy Ann and Andy were almost insulting.  
  However when my parents popped popcorn and sat us down a Sunday evening to watch a new Star Trek film we soon would be millions upon billions of light-years away.  
He was wonderful! Beautiful golden eyes, like a cats. His skin wasn't the right color but it made sense because he wasn't human.  
  My sister had always told me that I was green and looked like a frog when I was born. Mother would laugh and say. "That's not quite true! You see the doctors got your due date wrong and you cooked for too long before you were born. Your skin looked almost clear, veins are blue, look..." She'd point out veins on her arms. "You might have looked a bit green cause you could see lots of your veins under your skin; which is kind of yellow when you're a newborn."  
Staring up at the TV screen I thought maybe I looked like Data when I was born. I always wanted to be more like a cat. And Data's cat eyes were mesmerizing!  
I found a deeper connection with Data by the time I was 7. With crippling reading disability I was the Ying to Data's Yang. And with a staggering ability to hone in to the emotions of others and converse with people of almost any age. Yet I had no way other than word of mouth to communicate. Data could speak, read and write many languages but couldn't understand emotions.  
Hereditary mental illness (undiagnosed bipolar disorder) that I had was just like when Data was first trying out his emotion-chip. Short circuiting was something we both did. Laughing, screaming, crying, when yelling in under 3 minutes was not uncommon on bad days. Others I was an empty void or haunted by nightmarish imaginings which only I could see. Self-doubt an increasing awareness that I was not normal made me suicidal. Luckily at such a young age I had no idea how to end my life, I would cry myself to sleep wish never to wake... to be shut down until the day when someone could fix me!   
  Data had expressed that same wish we all remember that scene when Captain Picard reminds him of his responsibilities as Lieutenant Commander. My Father gave similar speeches to me and my sisters. A military man himself, instilled in us the importance of duty and honor!  
  And though my disorder was eventually diagnosed and treatment began, my sisters can testify in my teen years bad days were like I had an evil twin like Data, only it was sharing the same body as me.  
 Still my deep connection I felt came from the fact the Data rose to the challenge of dealing with his emotions.   
  Later, he found a way to deactivate the chip, turning it on and off at will. My medication numbed me greatly helping me cope. However I felt that I lost some of my humanity, and like Data would chose to stop making the numbing pills (turn the chip back on) from time to time.  
  In 2002 I saw the movie The Master of Disguise and for the first time ever it really hit me Data was not real!  
  At first My heart broke a little. However learning that it is the stories that give us hope, universal connections, something we can all relate to. That is when I first knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life...teach! Maybe not in a school, maybe just people I would meet. But I knew I had to share my story so I could help others.

 

   Thank you Data


End file.
